Testing the Limits

Oh, boy! Is she ever! Anna has hit the terrible twos a couple of months early! I don't remember Aubrey being like this, but then again, she didn't have an older sister who tried to boss her around and act like a mommy to her!
Anna has started hitting and pulling Aubrey's hair - sometimes for no reason and sometimes this is her reaction whenever she and Aubrey are fighting. The fighting has dramatically increased, but so has their playing together. Before, Anna really just wanted to play by herself, but now she's starting to follow Aubrey's lead and she likes to do all the same things that Aubrey is doing. Occasionally, she will bite Aubrey, but I hope she's getting past this stage.
Anna will also take toys from Aubrey for no reason. I honestly think she just wants Aubrey to react...which Aubrey always does in her melodramatic way. Her vocabulary is also growing and her two favorite words are "No!" (as she is pointing her finger at you) and "Stop!"

She gets time out and/or spankings with the No-No spoon regularly throughout the day. It's very exhausting to be disciplining her every time I turn around and I have to watch myself so that I don't lose my cool with her. After telling her the same things five times in a row, I'm just ready for her to "get it."
With Alexandra, Anna has started pinning her to the floor! Yes! She will walk up to Alexandra and just lay on her. Obviously Alexandra will start screaming and then Anna will get in trouble.

Sometimes when I send Anna to time-out, she will look at me smiling and then sort of skip to time-out. I have no clue how to prevent this from happening. I can't give her a spanking for every little thing she does, but I want her to know the small things that she does are wrong too.

Then on the other hand, she can be the sweetest and most gentle child. She loves to come up and kiss me on my cheek. The other day she came up to me and kissed me on both cheeks. No reason...just because. If I'm ever talking to her (mostly during the face to face time following time-out) and my hair has fallen in my face, she will take her hand and gently pull my hair out of my face. It's really hard to continue disciplining her when she does this! She's always eager to apologize to Aubrey and give her a big hug after she has done something to her and she LOVES kissing on Alexandra.

I'm praying hard that this acting out is just a typical two-year old phase and that it's not going to last long!

This is a typical Anna look!  She loves her baby dolls and had me wrap this one up in her blankie.